Another negative month. With August’s 5.45% drop, the stock market is now down four months in a row and about 10% in total since the end of April, enough to push the market into slightly negative territory for the year (talk about the old Wall Street adage ‘sell in May and go away’). But  considering we were down about 20% top to bottom from July 22nd to the lows in August, being down ‘only’ 10% feels sort of fortunate. ...read the rest of this article»

The big news remains the government debt drama, which as of this writing appears to be over, if by over you mean pushing the bulk of the problem ahead a few months. At least government bond holders will get their money. Of course, this was never really in question. As proof look at one of the highest performing fund category last month: long term government bonds, up 4.4%. So basically when there is panic in the air, people flood to treasuries - even when the panic is OVER treasuries. ...read the rest of this article»

June was worse than May in the stock market, but a big rebound during the last few days of the month trimmed the losses to just 1.67%. Before the recent rebound investors started pulling money out of stock funds. The pattern this year has been almost inversely perfect: investors started to put money into US stock funds right before the slide started.  ...read the rest of this article»

April’s upward move in stocks fizzled in May with a 1.15% drop in US stocks. Foreign stocks slipped 2.83% after rising sharply in April. In recent days the market took another dive with a sharp pullback on June 1st. The main fear seems to be a newly slowing economy, but we’re sticking to our take that newly sliding home prices are the real trouble spot. Stocks can’t go in a different direction from home prices forever. ...read the rest of this article»

The market shook off the troubles of March and headed to higher ground, up just shy of 3% in April. Considering the economy is showing some signs of running out of gas (perhaps because gas prices keep going up) and home prices are heading back down, investor optimism is surprisingly high. Too bad. Investors tend to do better long run getting in during periods of pessimism. Bonds were good after a period of rising interest rates early this year that was pushing mortgages into dangerous territory given the continued weakness in housing.  ...read the rest of this article»

With an almost perfectly flat S&P 500 in March, you’d almost think the month was a dull one on Wall Street. Hardly. By the middle of the month the S&P 500 was down about 8% from the close in February, largely due to a massive natural and manmade disaster in Japan (a market that itself was down almost 20% from the levels in February). Though Japan only partially rebounded, the S&P 500 ended the month back where it started. ...read the rest of this article»

Stocks continued to outshine bonds in February as inflation fears, state budget default hysteria, rising commodities, and growing inflation and turmoil in some emerging markets failed to spook investors (though in recent days things have become a little dodgy as oil prices hovered around $100). ...read the rest of this article»

The year started strong for stocks while bonds were stuck in the mud, the mud being rising long term rates and fears of future municipal bond defaults. The more stocks go up and bonds go down the better deal bonds become compared to stocks. ...read the rest of this article»

The market ended 2010 on a strong note, with our benchmark Vanguard 500 (VFINX) fund jumping 6.67% - good to deliver a 14.91% return for 2010. Foreign stocks, as measured by the iShares MSCI EAFE Index ETF (EFA), were up 8.3%, but underperformed the US market with a 8.25% return for 2010 – December saved international stocks from a negative year. Our Conservative portfolio was up 1.37% while our Aggressive portfolio was up 2.58% in December. For the year, Conservative was up 7.58% while Aggressive gained 9.84% - a solid return considering our significant bond allocations.  ...read the rest of this article»

As longer term followers of our portfolios know, we review the year-end tax distribution estimates for our funds around this time to aid in any year-end tax planning. In the case of large year-end distribution, it can make sense to hold off buying a fund until the distribution is paid, particularly with high tax rate short term capital gains. Sometimes it can make sense to sell before the distribution and buy a different fund. ...read the rest of this article»